Conveyors come in a variety of designs and sizes, and find versatile applications across a wide spectrum of fields, including manufacturing, selling, shipping, and agricultural industries. The underlining purpose of all conveyor systems is to transfer articles, or objects, such as fruits, vegetables, grain, processed or packaged products, etc., from one location to another location. Objects are advanced with a constant or variable velocity over a predetermined conveyor distance.
Existing conveyor systems attempt to customize and optimize the transferring operation by way of preparing articles carried by a conveyor for the next step or destination. Current conveyor systems for sorting of small articles, such as fruit, only provide random spacing between articles. Some systems use a variety of measuring devices for sorting by way of appearance or size at some point along the transfer route. Such systems lack an ability to align small objects uniformly and evenly. Slat and tray types of conveyors aim to uniformly align articles. However, slat and tray structural limitations leave the delivery to target destination often imprecise and inaccurate. Thus, existing conveyor systems and methods are not capable of transferring of large batches of small objects arrayed one-by-one, uniformly-spaced within single file channels, and within a plurality of such channels, in a continuous manner and delivering of the batch object-by-object to an exact target destination.
With large quantities of small objects, such as cranberries or blueberries, existing conveyor systems and methods do not, however, provide for an individual fruit's precise and accurate delivery to a precise sensing and sorting target destination. When embedded within another system, for example, a sorting system for fruits or vegetables, as further described in a related, commonly-owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/361,753 ('753), filed Dec. 15, 2008, pending, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, a customized conveyor capable of aligning and delivering large quantities of small objects, one-by-one, precisely and accurately to a sensor target location is highly desirable.
Therefore, a need exists for a conveyor system and method to provide an efficient, expedited, uniform, and controlled distribution of small objects into a plurality of uniformly spaced-apart, single-file channels, rows, or lanes. A need exists to distribute, arrange, and align objects as soon as the objects are introduced to the conveyor system. When the quantity of small objects increases, the need for such a system and method is particularly acute. Needed are a system and method, which can provide an efficient and reliable response handling and evenly distributing of a plurality of small objects into a plurality of channels.
Further problems with existing conveyors include stickiness of residue and small object jamming as well as, machine oil contamination of fruit. Adhesion of residue to the conveyor system from deformed, stuck, and crushed small objects reduces efficiency of the conveyor's operation. Jamming obstructs the pathway for subsequent objects, slows down the functioning of the system, increases the cost of the operation, and contributes to a significant reduction to the quality and quantity of the end product.
In extreme situations, when perishable goods, such as cranberries, by way of example, jam the system, the remaining batch degrades in quality, waiting for the conveyor system to be cleaned and operational again. When augmented to, or embedded within another system, an inefficient conveyor system may slow down the overall system's processing, manufacturing, and product finalizing performance. A need exists for an automated, non-destructive, easy to maintain, conveyor system and method that would significantly reduce inefficiencies due to jamming of small objects.
Thus, a need exists to provide an efficient conveyor system and method able to non-destructively transport large quantities of objects, such as cranberries, and aligning the objects for targeted delivery to a well-defined sensing destination. Further, a need exists for a conveyor of small, fragile objects to significantly reduce channel-jamming. Such conveyor system and method would preserve the quality of end product by maintaining optimal operation of the conveyor system and subsequently optimal operation of a system of which the conveyor system may be a part.
Although primarily described in agricultural context, and in particular embodiment of cranberry arraying and conveying for sorting purposes system, such conveyor system could apply to any other field, where a plurality of small objects needs to reach a target destination in an individualized, rapid, successive, reliable, precise and accurate, object-by-object manner.